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Meghan Udell recommended Emma in Books (curated)

 
Emma
Emma
Jane Austen | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
7.4 (31 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"It’s hard to think about literature and knitting without referencing Jane Austen. Sure knitting was a by-product of the time — a task to keep women’s idle hands busy while creating practical garments — but Jane Austen was never one to abide by traditional gender roles. The title character Emma is a self-assured, and self-sufficient young woman — an anomaly of the time. Prone to hubris, the only character Emma admires is the continually knitting Jane Fairfax."

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ClareR (5542 KP) rated The sentence in Books

May 1, 2022  
The sentence
The sentence
Louise Erdrich | 2022 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I don’t envy whoever has to narrow down the books on the Women’s Prize 2022 from the long list to the shortlist this year. The books I’ve read so far I’ve enjoyed all equally.

The Sentence is, amongst other things, a book about books. It’s also a book about Tookie, who works in a bookshop and is haunted by a deceased customer. Tookie has a colourful past, which involves imprisonment after it was discovered she had smuggled drugs over county lines, strapped to the corpse of a friends boyfriend. She didn’t know about the drugs, but she certainly knew about the dead body! Prison gave her plenty of time to read, and she leaves prison with a huge knowledge of literature.

On release Tookie gets a job in a Native American bookshop, and marries the Police officer who arrested her. Like her, he is also Native American.

This is a book of two halves: before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The ghost of the customer, Flora, remains in the bookshop for most of the book, whilst Minneapolis sees a lot of important things going on: the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter marches, the Covid-19 epidemic, isolation from friends and family, illness, near death experiences and the importance of heritage.

I loved this book. Like I’ve said, I’m just glad that I won’t have to decide the Women’s Prize winner. I still have some books to read from the long list, which I still want to read even though the shortlist has been announced - so watch this space!
  
Trail Blazers: An Illustrated Guide to the Women Who Explored the World by Lisa Graves is a picture book full of famous women explorers. I found it interesting and educational. There’s not a great amount of information, but what’s here is enough to give a sense of these women’s accomplishments, as well as their determination, in just enough detail to whet the reader’s curiosity.

Graves introduces readers to thirteen women who were influential explorers. Each woman gets one spread with a column about their life and most famous accomplishments. Further textboxes on the spread highlight major accomplishments, places travelled, etc. Some of these women are well known names, like Nellie Bly, Amelia Earhart, and Sacagewa, others are not so well known like Ida Laura Pfeiffer, Harriet Chalmers Adams, and Gertrude Bell. They explored any time between the mid 1700s to mid 1900s, used different methods of transportation, explored different areas of the world, but all were intrepid adventurers and left their marks in society, literature, science, archeology, geography, and more.

I received an ARC from Xist Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.